


What You Really Really Want

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Drunkenness, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 11:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9606116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Rey is deeply dubious about Poe's motives for being friendly to her. Maybe, though...just maybe...she can let down her guard a little.Beta by my ever-patient Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	

Rey is honestly not sure what to make of Poe. Finn clearly trusts him, and so does General Leia, so she’s inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s too...charming. He _knows_ he’s charming, and he uses it to make people like him. Rey’s met people like that before. They usually stop being charming once they get what they want out of you, and Rey can’t for the life of her figure out what the hell Poe Dameron _wants_.

He likes to invite her and Finn to eat at the table with him and his pilots, and he seems to like to talk to them about the training Master Luke and General Leia are giving them. He likes to talk about droids and starfighters, and seems delighted by Rey’s occasional anecdotes about learning to fly on Jakku, or about taking the _Falcon_ up to escape the First Order. He seems utterly delighted any time he gets a chance to give her or Finn - especially Finn - a new food, or explain a new custom to them.

Rey just can’t figure out what _he’s_ getting out of it. She and Finn aren’t terribly important yet, in the grand scheme of things - maybe they will be _someday_ , but it’s hard to imagine Poe befriending them with an eye to the long view, to being their sycophant should they someday be as powerful as she’s always heard the Jedi were once.

She doesn’t figure it out, in fact, for months - not until the evening they all gather for what Poe explains to her and Finn is a ceremony of remembrance for lost Alderaan.

“For Hosnian, too, now,” he says bleakly, sounding not nearly so cheerful as he usually does. “Even for Starkiller, and the poor bastards who died there.” He shrugs. “They told us at the Academy that war is hell, but somehow it doesn’t sink in until you start counting your dead.”

Poe gets quite drunk at the ceremony, and Rey and Finn end up helping him back to his quarters. Rey’s never seen a memorial service before, and isn’t sure she likes it. Finn just looks more and more solemn through the whole evening, and once Rey catches him making a little sign with one hand, small and surreptitious but somehow freighted with meaning, that she suspects is some sort of Stormtrooper way of remembering the dead.

They’re on their way back to Poe’s rooms, Poe with an arm over each of their shoulders - thankfully Rey is not that much shorter than he is - and staggering a little, all his usual careful grace gone, when he looks down at her and says mournfully, “I wish you liked me.”

“Why?” Rey asks, figuring as long as he’s drunk enough to be talkative - well, more talkative than usual, which is maybe saying something - she’s going to take advantage of it.

“Because you’re _wonderful_ ,” Poe says, slurring a little but clearly meaning every word. “Both of you! But Finn already likes me. But you don’t. I wish you did. Most people like me. You’re smart and brave and amazing and I’d like to be your friend.”

“Oh,” says Rey, baffled. “That’s - that’s all you want?” She had faintly worried he might be trying to _flirt_ with her, now and again, though as far as she can tell Poe flirts with _everything_ , as instinctually as breathing, and she’s not interested in that sort of thing just now - not even with Finn, who is the only person she trusts to watch over her while she sleeps.

“Yep,” Poe says, grinning, and then stumbles over nothing at all and Rey and Finn have to exert all their concentration to keep him from faceplanting, which rather derails the conversation.

They get him back to his room and tuck him into bed - Finn pulls his shoes off and Rey drapes a blanket over him - and then Finn hugs Rey around the shoulders and heads off for his own room, and Rey locks the door to her room behind her and sits down on the bed with her arms around her knees and thinks for a while.

She greets Poe the next morning with her tried-and-true hangover remedy and a bottle of water, and when he’s drunk them both, she says, very solemnly, “Alright, I’ll be your friend.”

Poe startled, delighted smile is remarkably pleasant. Rey isn’t used to making other people happy, besides Finn. It feels...sort of nice, really. She wouldn’t mind doing it again.

“Want me to show you how to fly an X-Wing?” Poe offers, and Rey smiles tentatively back at him.

“Yes,” she says slowly. “I think I’d like that. Thanks.”

“No problem, buddy,” Poe says easily, and Rey thinks - Rey thinks that now she has _two_ friends.

She thinks she likes it.

**Author's Note:**

> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr; stop on by!


End file.
